This blog holds 4 years worth of blog posts from the platform formerly known as Vox. It's unclear to me now whether I will keep adding to it or start anew. But in the meantime, at least there's a home for the famous limoncello post.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Pose. Smile. Click. Oh wait, can we try that again?

It reminded me of how much more I like my recent driver's license photo than any in the past. And how I used to never let myself be photographed.

I was the one behind the camera. It was safer there.

That aversion to being the subject of a photograph is why there are very few photos of me from the time I was about 10 through shortly before my daughter was born - some twenty years. With the exception of my gorgeous Hawaiian wedding photographs, there are few beauty shots in the albums to glorify my youthful twenties.

I can't even find my old driver's licenses from the middle two decades (which is odd because I save things like that). Those are the years Karen says I should I been posing happily for as many pictures as possible. And I suppose she's right.

One of my old boyfriends had a 35mm camera in his hand all the time and I was always avoiding it. Or screwing up the picture with a silly, or more often, a pissed off face. But I'm relative sure I looked pretty good back then. Not because I was younger, or had better hair, or more attractive features, but because I was happy.

That's the reason my most recent driver's license, taken as I entered my 50th year on the planet, looks a thousand times better than any from any previous year: and why the one right before it looks like a 3 AM mug shot of a apprehended female serial killer.

While I'll delete an unflattering picture of me faster than a shutter in bright sun, I don't flinch and try to hide from the camera anymore.

Comments

It reminded me of how much more I like my recent driver's license photo than any in the past. And how I used to never let myself be photographed.

I was the one behind the camera. It was safer there.

That aversion to being the subject of a photograph is why there are very few photos of me from the time I was about 10 through shortly before my daughter was born - some twenty years. With the exception of my gorgeous Hawaiian wedding photographs, there are few beauty shots in the albums to glorify my youthful twenties.

I can't even find my old driver's licenses from the middle two decades (which is odd because I save things like that). Those are the years Karen says I should I been posing happily for as many pictures as possible. And I suppose she's right.

One of my old boyfriends had a 35mm camera in his hand all the time and I was always avoiding it. Or screwing up the picture with a silly, or more often, a pissed off face. But I'm relative sure I looked pretty good back then. Not because I was younger, or had better hair, or more attractive features, but because I was happy.

That's the reason my most recent driver's license, taken as I entered my 50th year on the planet, looks a thousand times better than any from any previous year: and why the one right before it looks like a 3 AM mug shot of a apprehended female serial killer.

While I'll delete an unflattering picture of me faster than a shutter in bright sun, I don't flinch and try to hide from the camera anymore.